Falling Free
by Damokles
Summary: Based on the PC game „VtM: Bloodlines”. What if that final scene in the tower wasn’t really the end of your character’s story... But the cue for a new beginning.


There are five different ways for you to end the game. This fic is a continuation of the „Prince LaCroix ending", where you choose to side with him and, well... You know what happens. Considering LaCroix's personality and the way he manipulates the player character, I decided there must be more to this ending to make it more satisfying.

Spoiler Warning: if you never played or haven't finished the game yet, or don't know anything about the LaCroix ending, it will definitely spoil it for you.

I tried to achieve a neutral, suitable for most clans point-of-view, but some hints will give away what clan the character I had in mind while writing belongs to. Who says members ofother clans can't have artistic/weird tendencies, right?

* * *

**Falling Free**

_It is all a blur.._

When reality transforms into a mirror with a thousand cracks on its surface, thinking is a luxury. Heavy curtains of faintness are falling down, and my grip on the words is loosening... No, think now, concentrate!

_What happened?_

I became the vessel of a curse, casted by a disillusioned god so powerful that his murmured words still echo in our immortal forest of centuries. Something washed me away into this garden of time, a tidal wave of blood, and here the hours stand still, and the passing years are carved of frozen marble...

_No, no, think!_

Sunlight? Morning has broken, so the retreating darkness drags me with her, deep down into the cold core of Earth, where I can awaken to death and hide from our unlife. Until the moon shines again...

Not that either. _You chased it for the one on the top of the city…_

An explosion.

Something dead tried to kill something dead. _Before,_ _I fought a squid goddess in another world..._ The prophecy reached the end of it's journey to find itself at the beginning. They knew and warned me, subtle shadows came lurking around, but their whispers now shift away, to slide down on the broken mirror of conciousness... _"Whatever you do, do not open the... Don't open it!"_

_"I want it open!"_

_Don't make me say what I want open, damned Ventrue hypocrite assh..._

My eyes split open at once.

_Open…_

No and no. My embrace is almost two years away in the past, and dawn has some sleeping to do yet. What happened is now clear as the mirror of reality, free of cracks and blindspots again. Paralized and fatigued, I lie here in the midst of debris, on top of a fallen empire, amongst dreams swiftly dying with every flicker of the consuming flames.

_"…anyone who'd pursue any other course is deserving of the consequences."_

Your tower has fallen, parading euro-trash jester.

I cling to the pain of clear conciousness, trying to move, but my legs do not respond to the call. It is only my left arm and head I know are still attached, because I can move my neck to look at the bloody, ivory fingers lying on the wrecked floor.

Final death, is it what they call our escape from this carnal purgatory? Both my legs are deformed, and I bet this cracking sound coming from my hip bones is a sign they're broken too. Overwhelming pain, plenty of blood used up, more and more memories coming back. _What else?_

Great weight sits on my right arm, stuck under something cold and smooth… I push myself to roll over, and through the crunching of splintered bones, a faint whisper reaches the horizon of my senses.

_Who is…_

I stroke dead flesh with my sprained fingers as I gently pull back my arm. The shoulders of my foster-god. Your dignity is safe now, merciful garrotter. There's no one else here to laugh at your torn body.

But is it true that your ancient blood-father Ventrue could see the future, my Prince? Then tell me, why can't you?

„_I only did it for the greater good."_

Sudden waves of pain wash my thoughts clean of mockery. Conciousness is dimming again, so I reach out to the blood inside this immortal clay. It is a call to arms, I force every drop and globule to spread, find the damaged tissue, and use the dark power of vitae to fix my dead machinery. Falling down into the pit of torpor is certain death now.

Whenever the bloodthirst arises or my humanity fades into the survival instinct of the choiceless, I've got a bittersweet memory from my breathing days I can wrap myself around, like a snake, to safely listen to the Beast growl behind my back. I call it the „buoy of mortality", this cainite shibboleth inside all of us, but now…

It does not work. Destiny decided against the love child of this Camarilla menagerie.

Flames are eating up the ruins of mighty Ventrue Tower, the hideaway of those who wish to be seen. Prince LaCroix is dead - as we kindred all are, but unlike me, he can still whisper.

_So what happened?_

Whoever hid inside the Ankaran sarcophagus left the stone womb quite prematurely. Are you all smiley now, smelly Brujah bum? May the sun light up your smile, Jack…

_"I thought you deserved a chance."_

Burning with the blood as it repaires my hips and thighs, realization comes hastily – no way I can make it out like this, before the fires ambush this floor and crawl down to eat our long deceased corpses. My bloodpool is almost dry.

Underworld days come to an end too, as assyrian mythology stilishly corroborates our fate.

„_One thing is certain…"_

Lying on his back, spread out like the cross with arms wide open, LaCroix is facing the fire-framed stars above. Without a left leg, and his expensive, ugly suit melted into his skin, odds are unkind to him all of a sudden. No blood craft can reconstruct the clay of his body anymore.

Your blood is not blue, my dear step-sire. Rumor once again proves false. But it smells sweeter than fresh paint on a canvas.

_"…power is inside. "_

A nice pile of C4 is quite overpowering. My traitor king screamed as I already made a run for the stairs, breaking down a safety door, spending a hefty sum of blood coins to move with celerity. Three floors below the throne of our assyrian prize… _"Interesting guy…"_ I heard him flounder on the floor above as the explosion's heat whacked me against a door. Then the ceiling disappeared into a black velvet picture of starry heavens, and waves of fire closed up above us when the walls started falling apart. _"…you'll like 'im. "_

_Who was that guy, really? Could he…_

I cannot sink now, no…

_Caine? Myths don't drive you around in a big yellow taxi._

Blood. I try to get up, though my knees are but a handful of shattered bone chips. For the first time in two years, the perpetual marble that kindred time is made of melts, and immortality means nothing more than this very moment I see.

„_Remember, wherever we go, it is the blood of Caine…"_

Which makes our fate. Even a little dog can bark aloud, cabbie. Thank you all the same.

I must gain all the courage there is in order to…

_The Sabbat. _

Monsters_. My kindred._

Using my elbows I crawl, and those few inches feel like a whole football stadium. Finally, I lean over LaCroix, my arms cradling his fairly intact upper body like children hold their favorite teddy bear. A nauseating goo of molten skin and textile sticks to my hands.

„_We will rule this city together, you and I."_

His cold, empty eyes wander over my face. He knows. Don't you, my dear Prince, my step-sire, my would-be partner in leadership? The Sabbat were literally living across the street from you, asshat. Allying with the Kuei Jin? Calling a bloodhunt on me? On top of that, you murdered a primogen and who knows how many others of your kin. And now there's fear in your eyes, Sebastian. Didn't you know children learn through example?

He tries to whisper again, and I tilt my head closer to the burnt, bloody mess of a face, to hear his faint elegy.

„…Forty… forty centuries behold you."

I recognize Napoleon's words. Is it your buoy of mortality, suave jester? The flash of passed times you cling to when monsters munch on your soul? Do you wish that centuries were still looking down upon you, and not the other way around?

Flames. My renewed fingers gently brush away honey colored hairs from the wrecked face as I slowly turn his head to the other side. I remember his predatory smile, when I first looked into those hazel eyes at the abandoned theatre – _stupid neonate makes eye contact with big bad Ventrue who can dominate minds, huh?_

Children indeed learn through example. You taught me much about diablerie, too.

An inferno of destruction. Time is such a newborn concept, but it is running out all the same. I press my lips against his ear so he'll surely hear me over the cacophony of the crackling and crashing of falling rubble:

„Forgive me."

The very words you spoke to my sire, fallen Prince, just before the execution. _Understand my predicament._

My fangs sink into icy flesh with a portentous crunch. Something dead tries to kill something dead. Hasn't this night of irrevocability been too easy on irony?

_Amaranth._ The forbidden drupe. No gourmand have experienced such culinary pleasure before.

Heatwaves warp my sight, so I retreat into blindness. Holding him tight with gentle arms, I can feel his mind grabbing back through the sweet vitae bonding us. Like a pile of ash, I shatter and dissipate when the wind of LaCroix's essence comes sweeping through my psyche - we slowly start to mix, combine into something else, dissolving into one another like liquids in a shaker.

_King of a swamp, that's what I am… _Every little splinter now struggles _An Anarch Free State is nothing, but_ to lodge into the solid body of my spirit. Like _a zit on the face of the Camarilla community_ the setting of the sun, he's shrinking, farther _and_ _blood cannot turn into water_and farther down the _even the Camarilla will bend _barrell of mortality. The last drop of vitae wasn't _to my will, you see the Kuei Jin are_ the boundary of my sin, _enemies you keep so close your friends envy them but it could work _but this spell _please no_ roped us together with unbreakable _the_ _sarcophagus _chains, until _itwasempty _the very last,_ no _ultimate end.

The end of my dear Prince.

My adopted puppet master still pulling my freshly cut strings. I'm falling free.

_Farewell, vampire._

Through a cloud of astonishment, Napoleon is talking to me. In Egypt, I stand before an imperishable pyramid built of timelessness, praying to every saint in the book to give me the power, the hand that created such a mighty sanctuary, the will to rise up like the Sun, after every fall below the world's edge. Borrowed vitae builds my cells and bones again while LaCroix's eyes become mine, I consume his history, making it part of this picture I paint of myself… Memories. Blood. Follow and be followed, great leader, for the just paths are all taken.

The fresh paint dries up, leaving black stains all over me.

„_I have shown you great clemency."_

I rose to my feet. Will you always be my company, lost Prince? My mind is full of you even though the stolen blood already burned away the pains.

I feel… _Closer. _Different._ More powerful. _Magnificent.

Through the elevator shaft, I'll be able to climb down and get out, before familiar cainites show up to see if Messerach's clothes were made of gunpowder. Stumbling through rubble, flaming furniture and all the greasy ashes a body can leave behind, I quiver. Flames will soon sweep the tower clean of every last hint of the weak king. All but the last piece - that I'll carry inside.

„…_prove it was more than a wasted gesture."_

The world didn't end, Beckett, you loudly howling wolf of uncertainity. See? Every ending is only a cue for new beginnings. Though the tower's destruction is nearing completion, I swiftly slide down on this celestial fortress, back to the night's surface, and arrive unhurt by the purifying flames.

No doubt the Camarilla will cast me away, but darkness fondles me just the same. We are all equal in the eyes of the night, and there's only one place where _my kindred_ understand this.

All the blood left inside I now squeeze right below the uppermost layer of my ivory skin. Rosy cheeks and a warm touch – I feel _alive_. This was not the end.

_It is all clear now…_


End file.
